Google Play - Fully Shadowed apk

For me it worked the following way:

• First send a rollout only with the version you want to deactivate.
• Secondly, send a rollout with the version you want to publish to Beta.

Seems that under certain conditions Google Play cannot handle deactivating and publishing at the same time.

Update :- Talked to a Googler working with Google Play console team regarding this issue. One misconception I had at the time was that you need to retain an APK if you want to have a staged rollout. I discussed this with him, and he clarified that it is not needed. Even in staged rollout, with no retained APK, Google play will show an install option to users who visit the app's page. Hope this clears doubts for someone facing similar issues.

I was having the same problem and I fixed without clicking "Retain" for previous version and uploaded a new one and then "Start Rolling" button turn into clickable and done!! ^_^

The Play Console has a bug and that's why it doesn't work. This is the work around:

Say, you have two versions:

1. Beta: 29
2. Alpha: previously version 29, but now empty: 'Promoted to beta’ it says. You want to upload version 30.

Then do this:

1. Create a new Alpha release with version 30, and deactivate the previous APK. When you try to roll it out, it errors Fully shadowed APK.
2. Go back a page and now remove version 30. Version 29 will be selected, click Save and Start roll out to Alpha. This only deactivates 29.
3. Create a new Alpha release for 30, it should work now.

Note: this solution works for the time it was posted if doesn't work in the future don't consider it wrong because things changes with time.

You have to deactivate previous version while uploading a new APK that works for me. Simply deactivate previous versions and upload a new APK and roll it out for production.